John Lucas
It's purely availability. I can buy a table saw or bandsaw most any day of the week by watching the local sales network and doing a little search on other sales in my area. It's very hard to find lathes. Well OK, good lathes. You can buy Craftsman and Harbour freight low dollar lathes all the time. It's extremely rare to find something like a Jet 1642 and even more rare to find the top of line lathes.